I saw something amazing in the bee nectary garden today: A black swallowtail butterfly mating with a yellow swallowtail. They were juxtaposed together in mid-air, and it was quite a sight to behold. Here's the male having a sip of nectar just before the mating dance occurred:

In case he's difficult to spot, he's located in the lower center of this pic.

Dozens of homemade grease patties for winter bee feeding and herbal medication. They are sandwiched between waxed paper sheets, cut into squares for quick feeding, sealed in a zip-lock bag and placed in the freezer:

Here are notes on the wonderful film which Ilinda had highly recommended: Queen of the Sun: What are the Bees Telling Us?

The film opens with vivid images of flowering plants and music reminiscent of Copeland's Appalachian Spring...

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Colony collapse disorder is the bill we are getting for all we have done to the bees...

~Gunther Hauk, author of The Honeybee Crisis: An Opportunity to Transform Destructive Agricultural Practices and Real Food for Thought and Stomach: An Introduction to Biodynamic Agriculture (link unavailable) and Toward Saving the Honey Bee.

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We have lost in America 5 million colonies, each one having 50,000 or 60,000 honey bees. The bees are giving us messages, and their crisis is our crisis. We could call it "colony collapse disorder" of the human being too.

[I've personally visited and photographed that town, which is deep in the heart of Appalachia with an inimitable local culture centered at the Floyd Country Store, which hosts a radio program reminiscent of Garrison Keillor's Prairie Home Companion. It also boasts clogging (an Appalachian form of dance) on the wooden floor, as well as live music and savory cooking made from scratch.https://www.floydcountrystore.com/

Perhaps best of all is the drive down there (from a Northern perspective): One takes Skyline Drive through the Shenandoah Mountains at 40 mph for several hours of jaw-dropping mountain vistas, which then segues onto the Blue Ridge Parkway for a few more hours in which black bear cubs nibble wild berries along the road, and then one pretty much comes to the town without much of a foray off of that path.]R.B.

The honey bee is important because we depend on it to pollinate 40% of our food...So 4 out of 10 bites that you consume, you would not be consuming if not for the work of the honey bee.

~Michael Pollan, author of Omnivore's Dilemma

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(Paraphrased due to broken English) In all the stories of the bees, bees have been in the world for 150 million years...and humans have only been interacting with them for 10,000 years. A cooperation between them slowly began.

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Beekeepers, they are chosen by bees.

Yvonne Achard of Grenoble, France

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The honey bee was considered a sacred animal, and the sacredness came out of that knowledge that the honey bee is one of the great nurturers of life and fertility.

~Hauk

Honey was only given as a gift, never sold, until the late 19th or early 20th century. It contains silica from the earth, which is necessary for all sensory organs in the human body.

Rudolph Steiner presciently predicted that colony collapse disorder would manifest by the end of the 20th century, due to mechanization of the "industry." The most egregious example in modern times is essentially the forcible relocation of thousands of hives annually to promote cropping of almonds on 600,000 acres of monoculture in California.

[Interjection: A boycott on that crop may not be such a bad idea, though it may now be illegal to propose such a thing due to a law against speech that could be deemed a terroristic threat against agriculture.] R.B.

Michael Pollan then adds that 3/4 of the American bee population is conscripted to work the almond fields of California, and given high-fructose corn syrup to eat while there. Because of the monoculture almond crop, there are no other significant blossoms in that area to sustain the bees more than two weeks out of the year.

Because there aren't enough American honey bees in existence to pollinate the almond crops, bees from Australia are being imported with all of their unfamiliar diseases. The 75% of bees in the States that service the almond crops annually are exposed to these diseases and then sent back home with them, to be introduced into the wild.

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Millions of bees die every year while waiting in holding yards before pollination begins.

The problem with monoculture, says Raj Patel, is that you destroy an entire ecosystem to create it.

Raj Patel is the author of Stuffed and Starved: From Farm to Fork, the Hidden Battle for the World Food System.

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GMO crops in the heartland of America are, for the honey bees, deserts. There is no forage - they can't exist there.

~Hauk

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Honey is made by bees inside of a hive who have never seen the light, yet they are nourished by light. Pollen is materialized light. And they have the ability to free the light they have ingested, making snow white wax. And then man can harvest the wax and make candles, so that at Christmas, the darkest time of the year, he can free the light again.

ilinda

Nothing could be added to THAT! Thanks for the review, and it makes me want to dig our copy out and rewatch.

Met a guy over the weekend whose name is Zach, and his business card reads, "Zach of All Trades", and some of his products/services are bee hives, capturing swarms, nucs in the spring, and more. It would be nice to get the new hives along with the nucs from the same source. Forgot to ask if he sells queens. Are there any caveats about buying hives and nucs from same vendor?

1. Never purchase used equipment (you don't know what may be lingering from bees that may have died in it)

2. Buy all your woodenware (if using vertical hives and not making them from scratch) from the same vendor, as each one may be a fraction of an inch off from another supplier, which can throw your whole hive a little off-kilter and be frustrating to work with.

Ilinda, regarding the inherited woodenware, it's possible that there may have been some mites still hiding in the empty boxes, but they need blood to feed on, and one wonders why the bees had vacated the boxes. Had the colony died? I'd be more concerned about American Foulbrood spores possibly remaining in them.

There are great lengths that possibly could be resorted to to salvage such boxes, but it's not recommended, and may be illegal (the local ag extension agent has the right to burn the boxes if disease is found upon inspection, but that's more likely to happen on a visit to a professional apiary - they never come out to inspect us with just a few hives, even though we're licensed). It may be possible to immerse the boxes in alcohol, smoke them with an herbal disinfectant, torch them with a smaller controlled burn (such as with a long-handled BIC lighter, etc.), but I'm not experienced with this...just musing about how to be frugal when resources may be scarce to non-existent...

ilinda

Good points. We will probably start with brand new hives because of all the potential pitfalls associated with used ones.

Have always wondered if using Eastern Red Cedar boards would be a good idea. Would the aroma of cedar be too strong? Or would it help inhibit many different (micro-)organisms? There was an article somewhere about a bee colony that had been living for decades in an ancient red cedar tree and the discussion included the question about the cedar scent's possible beneficial effect on bees.

Those who live in the North should take inventory of their tulip poplar trees, all species of clover, and Melissa / lemon balm, which is vital to bees in autumn.

That's quite a list on wikipedia!

One thing they love here is Holy Basil or Sacred Basil, Ocimum tenuiflorum, AKA tulsi, and some years it is covered by honeybees from spring until frost, while some years they are there, but not in huge humbers. Jacqueline Freeman in her book Song of Increase mentions how they know what they need, and they go get it, if available.

I filmed it just before sundown, hanging right over the bait hive that Ilinda had encouraged me to furnish with foundationless frames, so that any swarm that should happen to choose it as their new home would be able to free-form their own comb. This allows the bees to revert their cells (bedrooms) to a naturally smaller size and thus slim the larvae down such that mites are unable to invade their tracheas.

There is no guarantee that the swarm will choose the bait hive, and I was out of lemongrass oil which attracts swarms by mimicking the queen's pheromones. Instead I inserted a fresh jar of syrup from unrefined sugar into the entrance, and left the roof off just a tad, as rain is on the way. In addition, I offered two nuc boxes with wax foundation already strung out, with lids slightly ajar. These are really not suitable for permanent homes, but would offer a safe temporary location for the swarm, as they are tucked out of the weather beneath the larger long hives from which the swarm presumably originated.

This is a natural phenomenon that beekeepers try to prevent to some extent, which they perhaps shouldn't interfere with, as the swarm takes the aging queen with it, as well as potentially several princesses, to a new nearby location, while the old colony retains about half of the bees with a new queen of their own choosing from among the princesses. Russian bees are especially strong on this trait, such that a swarm is never a life-threatening event for them, unlike with some other kinds of honey bees, which is one of the main reasons that I have been working exclusively with Russians since 2008.

A spring swarm has a much higher chance of surviving in the wild than an autumn swarm. One of our old swarms had taken up housekeeping in an old hollow tree in the woods just adjacent to our apiary, so that the "wild" bees and our cultivated ones are all neighbors, and the gene pool is beneficially expanded, as the old swarm in the woods was from a different queen breeder.

With temps dropping back down to freezing one night later this week after a warm spell, and storms on the way, it will be critically important for this swarm's scout bees to find a suitable location as soon as possible. I sat in the bee yard meditation chair as the sun went down and prayed for them to make the best possible choice for a new home, even if it means they don't choose the bait hive and remain with us.

« Last Edit: May 05, 2020, 06:58:29 PM by R.R. Book »

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ilinda

Yours is the most wonderful story I've encountered in quite a while. It was so energizing that I read it several times. They are in the right place and you are the right steward and I/we wish you and them health and wellness.

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